The following article is excerpted from In All Directions, Thirty Years of Travel by Bill Scheller, published by Natural Traveler Books and available at Amazon.com
Sardinia: Prideful Isle Islands, April 2003 By Bill Scheller
Most of what is written about Sardinia has to do with the posh playground of the ultra-wealthy, the Costa Smeralda (”Emerald Coast”) on the island’s northeastern extreme. Far less well known are the mountains of the interior – the wildest country I have even encountered in western Europe – and Sardinia’s capital, small towns, and curious prehistoric ruins.
Was I on the right mountain? I told myself it shouldn't matter, since only about 15 feet of altitude separated Punta La Marmora and its barely less lofty twin, Bruncu Spina, the two highest peaks on the island of Sardinia. And it didn't matter - not when I considered my surroundings. The May sky was bright blue, and an array of jagged peaks stretched for miles in every direction. That far above tree line, the panorama spreading beneath me was equally vivid. From the summit cairn, where I sat next to a cross made from welded iron pipe, I could see a queue of sheep straggling through the gorse a half mile below, and two dogs holding them to their path. The tinkling of the sheep's bells, a liquid-silver sound that seemed to come from immensely far away, drifted uphill on the breeze. If there was a shepherd I did not see him; very likely, he had just finished milking and had sent the sheep and dogs to the high spring pastures. I thought of the shepherd making cheese, like the pecorino I was enjoying with crisp native flat bread and a bottle of Sardinian wine there at my 6,000foot aerie. Whether on Punta La Marmora
or Bruncu Spina, the cheese and wine would have tasted just as good. I was lucky to be alone up there. Just a few days before, at the pier in Naples where I had waited to board my ferry for Sardinia, I had found myself surrounded by at least a hundred men in identical plaid shirts and feathered Tyrolean hats. Some of them carried tin cups on their belts. One of them had an accordion, and after warming up with a few Italian songs, they roared into “Roll Out the Barrel” with all the gusto of the best bowling team in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. As they sang, I read the patches on their shirts. They were members of the Club Alpino Italiano, and I immediately suspected what they were up to. They were going to get on my boat, and they were going to climb Punta La Marmora the same day I was. But instead they got on the ferry to Sicily. And so I was alone by my iron-pipe cross, in the emptiest part of Europe that I know. The high peaks of the Gennargentu massif in east-central Sardinia are the sort of mountains that are easy to climb, once you've managed the far more complicated business of getting to the trailhead. The road from Aritzo, my village base, was almost laughably tortuous - a rutted, stream-crossed cow path 33
